Translating Tickera

Translating Tickera

Tickera and its add-ons use standard .pot language files. To edit these files we'll be using Poedit software which is compatible with Microsoft Windows, Apple OSX and Linux. It is free and can be downloaded here.

Before we start, we should first locate the default language files which are stored in tickera/languages folder. Make a copy of tickera-event-ticketing-system.pot file and store it somewhere on your computer where you can easily access it later.

Now, start Poedit app and once it loads, click on File and then New From POT/PO File like the picture below suggests.

Once prompted, browse to the copy of the tc-en.pot file you have made earlier and stored to your computer. As soon as it loads, you will be prompted to select the language of the translation.

As you may notice Poedit has a very simple interface.  There is a list of all the translatable strings and two boxes below the list. One for the original (source) string and second for the translation.   When you translate a string, Poedit will automatically move to the next string in the queue.

So, roll up your sleeves, make yourself nice, big cup of coffee and start translating as there are more than thousand strings to translate. 

When you  finally finish translating, save your file and Poedit will automatically compile a .mo version of the file in the same directory.

Before we upload our freshly created language files, it is very important to name them properly as if we fail to name our language files to correspond to the selected default language of our website, they simply won't load. So, to do that, you have to start the name of each file with "tickera-event-ticketing-system" (without quotation marks) followed by dash symbol "-" and finally followed by the WordPress locale for your language. For example, if you are using Norwegian (Bokmål) language on your website, filenames should be tickera-event-ticketing-system-nb_NO.po and tickera-event-ticketing-system-nb_NO.mo Now, if you are not sure what is your language WordPress locale, you should consult a chart found here  and search for your language.

Once you have named your files properly all you need to do is to upload your newly created .mo and .po files to the wp-content/languages/plugins folder. That's right you noticed it: we are not placing our new language files to tickera/languages folder but rather in the "upper level" as it will result in language files staying intact when you update Tickera and therefore you will need to do this only once. Nevertheless, do not forget to make backup of original files just in case.